Minimum Wage Hike Could Cost 500,000 Jobs [AUDIO]

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The Congressional Budget office is chiming in on the proposed hike of the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour. A report says that if it is fully implemented by 2016, it could end up costing upwards of 500,000 jobs.

Morning Answer co-host Elisha Krauss feels it could be more than 500,000 affected. “They talked about 16.5 million people will be positively affected… of that 16.5 million, only 1.6 million are currently at minimum wage. So there’s 14.9 million employees… that are getting somewhere between above minimum wage and $10.10 an hour. How is that going to affect all those business owners?” wondered Elisha.

Ben Shapiro agreed. “Right, the question is whether all the people who are going to get fired are the people who are currently at $7.25 moving up to $10.10 or are they currently a lot of people at eight bucks moving up to $10.10 who are going to get fired,” he pointed out. “The big problem here is of so-called ‘fairness.’ Whenever the government talks about what’s fair and what’s an equitable wage… you can’t put a number on fair and equitable unless that number is equal with everyone else. “

Click on the player above to hear Brian Whitman, Ben Shapiro and Elisha Krauss chat about how raising the minimum wage could negatively impact the economy and the job prospects for hundreds of thousands of low wage workers.